


Occupational Hazard

by JeanGraham



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-11-01 22:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20525465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanGraham/pseuds/JeanGraham
Summary: A guilt-ridden Solo decides it's time to retire from the spy business.





	Occupational Hazard

* * *

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD -- by Jean Graham  
  
The pain had come back. Lancing, agonizing, it seared into him  
from everything that touched him: walls... floor... the bars of the  
cell.  
  
_ Drugged,_ he remembered hazily._ Experimental serum... Thrush._  
  
Illya Kuryakin moaned, aware that for a time, he'd lost the pain in  
the merciful oblivion of unconsciousness. But now the memory of  
the needles, the faces, the shouted questions had all returned,  
along with the horror they'd inflicted.  
  
Voices. Echoing. Coming toward him. Probably Thrush returning to  
finish the job. From somewhere far away he thought he could hear  
the faint sound of gunfire. But it had probably been nothing.  
  
"Hurry," said a voice, very near now. "Get it open."  
  
The familiar hiss of a magnesium capsule was closely followed by  
the _whuff_ of its soft explosion and the rattle of the cell door.  
  
"Illya--"  
  
That voice he knew. Solo. It belonged to Solo.  
  
Hands touched him, started to lift him, and immediately the pain  
responded. He cried out.  
  
"Hold on," the other voice said urgently. "Let me check him over  
first."  
  
"We don't have time," Solo protested. "Thrush is--"  
  
"I'll hurry. Get him on the cot."  
  
He clenched his teeth to keep from crying out again as the hands  
lifted, pulled him, sat him down against the prickly mattress and  
the hard cell wall. Through the roaring in his ears, he thought he  
recognized the other voice now. The man was part of Section Two's  
field medical team. Jameson... that was his name. Dan Jameson.  
  
The gunfire sounds came clearly now from somewhere above them.   
Illya felt Jameson's hands swiftly opening the buttons of his  
sweat-dampened shirt.  
  
"Is he conscious?" Solo asked.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Illya--" Solo's voice again. "Illya, if you can hear me, please  
try to answer. We know Peter Loran was with you on this  
assignment. Do you know where he is?"

  
Illya tried to shake his head, not certain at all that he'd  
succeeded. He didn't know what had happened to Loran, hadn't seen  
him since Thrush had discovered them both and...  
  
"I thought you knew," Jameson's voice said while his hasty  
examination continued. "Sewell and Parks found Loran in an  
upstairs cell on the way in. He's dead."  
  
Solo's voice was a reflection of utter misery. "Wonderful," he  
said.  
  
"Stop blaming yourself," Jameson admonished. "It wasn't your fault  
Section Two got its signals crossed on this one." He closed  
Illya's shirt, and his hands moved on to unbutton the cuff of his  
right sleeve.  
  
"Can you tell what's the matter with him?"  
  
"I'm not sure. There are some contusions... possibly internal  
injuries, but nothing that accounts for--" His voice and the hands  
rolling up Illya's sleeve both stopped at once.  
  
"Shit," he said.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"Needle marks. Several dozen of them. Intelligence thought they  
were working on a new drug, but we didn't think the bastards had--"  
  
"Which drug?" Solo interrupted. "The truth serum?"  
  
"No, not this one. Damned stuff only has one purpose, and that's  
to inflict as much pain as possible before it..." There was the  
faintest of hesitations before he finished the sentence.   
"...kills. Probably the same stuff they gave Loran, only they must  
have injected him sooner."  
  
Jameson's voice faded slightly, and there was the sound of a  
medikit snapping open, then liquid, pouring into a container.   
"Here," he said. "Try to get some of this down him, then get him  
out to the truck if you can. I've got to get up to the lab before  
your storm-troopers burn it to the ground."  
  
"What for?"  
  
"There's supposed to be an anti-toxin to this serum. If Thrush is  
its usual efficient self, there ought to be a sample or two  
upstairs somewhere. I'll meet you outside."  
  
"Dan--" Solo's voice called. Then, more quietly, he finished, "Be  
careful."  
  
"Sure."  
  
The cell door clicked open, shut. Jameson's hurried footsteps  
receded.  
  
"Illya..." The rim of a cup touched his lips, and something thick  
and bitter-tasting flowed into his mouth. "Illya, we have to get  
out of here." An explosion from up above accentuated Solo's words.   
"Can you hear me?"  
  
Wearily, Illya tried to force his eyes to open, but he could see  
only the blurred, shadowy outline of Solo's form, and the light  
made his head hurt even more. Somehow, he managed to answer the  
question with a hoarse "yes," but his own voice sounded alien, like  
someone else's.  
  
"Do you think you can walk?"  
  
A familiar note of irony tinged Illya's weak voice. "Do I have a  
choice?"  
  
"I'm afraid not."  
  
"Then I'll walk."  
  
The pain coursed through him with a renewed vengeance when Solo  
helped him up, and one arm supporting his weight, coaxed him toward  
the cell door. He bit back the urge to scream, concentrated  
instead on putting one foot repeatedly in front of the other.  
  
_Walk. Do nothing else, think nothing else. Just walk._  
  
Through the haze of an imminent lapse back into unconsciousness, he  
coerced his feet to move until at last, they'd reached the panel  
truck Jameson had spoken of. To Illya, it was nothing more than a  
vague, dark shape in the blinding sunlight, but he welcomed the  
shelter of its metal walls: they came with the knowledge that he  
was going home... away from Thrush, and away from the pain...  
  
"Where's Jameson?" someone asked, and Illya heard the chatter of  
more gunfire from outside the truck.  
  
"Looking for an antidote," Solo said tiredly. "He'll be along in  
a minute."  
  
"I hope so," the other man said. "'Cause a minute's about all he's  
got. That lab is going up as soon as Sewell's charges blow."  
  
"I know," Solo said. Illya had never heard him sound so depressed.   
"It should have gone up several hours ago."  
  
The other agent's footsteps moved away, dropping to the ground  
outside. The shouts and confusion of the "mop up" operation  
continued: sporadic bursts of gunfire still came from deep inside  
the Thrush compound.  
  
"I'm sorry, Illya," Solo said. "We should have been here sooner.   
If I hadn't let that phony homing signal decoy us, we would have  
been." There was a long silence before his voice continued. "I'm  
giving Waverly my request-for-retirement when we get back to New  
York. I think I'm getting too old for this business anymore..."  
  
From the floor of the truck, his head on the makeshift pillow of a  
rolled-up field jacket, Illya struggled to focus on Napoleon Solo's  
face. Jameson's syrupy potion had made him drowsy, but it had done  
nothing to numb the pain.  
  
"You couldn't know," he said thickly. "You had... no way..."  
  
"That's just it. I _should_ have known. All the signs were there,  
and I didn't see them. If I had, I could have pinpointed this  
place and sent the unit in twelve hours sooner. Loran might still  
be alive."  
  
"...too hard on yourself," Illya murmured, and almost on top of his  
words, an explosion rocked the ground beneath the truck.  
  
Sewell's charges had gone off.  
  
A clamor of voices descended on the truck then. A number of  
shadow-figures crowded in around Illya.  
  
"How is he?" one asked.  
  
"Not good," Solo answered. "Where's Jameson?"  
  
"I'm right here. Tell Barnes to get the truck moving. Thrush is  
sending in reinforcements and we don't want to be around when they  
arrive."  
  
"Did you find the antidote?"  
  
"I found it."  
  
The truck's engine rumbled to life as Jameson spoke. "If I'm in  
time, we're home free. Just give me a minute to fill the hypo."  
  
Illya felt the lurch of the truck's sudden motion beneath him.   
Nearby, Solo's voice echoed, "...in time. We weren't any of us in  
time. My poor judgment cost Peter Loran his life, and damned near  
cost us Illya's."  
  
Illya flinched as the cold steel of Jameson's hypodermic slid into  
the flesh of his arm. The pain of the injection was intensified  
tenfold by the lingering effects of Thrush's drug, but when the  
needle withdrew, he began to feel a stronger, far more pleasant  
sensation overtaking him.  
  
"He'll probably be out for a while," Jameson's voice said. "But I  
think the injection's in time to check the toxin. We'll know in an  
hour. Maybe two."  
  
Illya tried to lift a hand toward the dim shape that was Solo:  
tried to force his mouth to form three more words before the  
darkness overtook him.  
  
"Not your fault," he said, but the words were faint, whispered,  
already drifting away with him into the void.  
  
Solo never heard them.  
  
\-- End --

See all of my fanfic and links to my pro fiction at <http://jeangraham.20m.com.>


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